Organizational Topologies: your roadmap towards an innovative, resilient and adaptive product development organization. Many organizations struggle to adopt "agile" in a way that delivers on its promise to make the company fast, flexible and efficient. Global consultancy firms have great pitches on how to adopt different so-called “Agile frameworks”. The marketing is great, but are the results too? We see how our clients get stuck in adopting a framework - forming “agile teams”, appointing “product owners” and then clustering all this into “tribes”. Thus creating robust structures that make further organizational improvements and adaptability difficult, slow, and expensive. This talk offers ideas how to go beyond these limiting ideas and explores a map of organizational transformation based on orgtopologies.com.

1. Organizational Topologies
towards holistic product development
© 2021-2022 Roland Flemm, Alexey Krivitsky
orgtopologies.com

2. Organizational Topologies ?
Anyone familiar with

3. That’s us
Roland Flemm
PST
Alexey Krivitsky
CST

4. The PROBLEM

5. Frameworks,
frameworks
everywhere

6. The VALUE

7. Value of a framework
# of framework elements
The VALUE

8. Value of a framework
# of framework elements
1 9
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|
The VALUE

9. Value of a framework
# of framework elements
1 9
|
|
The VALUE

10. Value of a framework
# of framework elements
1 9
|
|
(c) Alexey Krivitsky
|
The VALUE

11. Imagine a world without frameworks…

16. MAKE
THINKING
SEXY
AGAIN

17. “The research results are
clear. The solutions must
come from within the
organization.”
Dr. J. Kotter

18. “Own not rent”
Craig Larman

19. Organizational Topologies ?
How does this all relate to

20. https://youtu.be/5wY4lZliuOU

21. Goal of archetype
projects
Optimizing for resource
utilization of cost centers
(not agile)

22. projects

23. ??
projects

24. https://youtu.be/jA0R-r967ws

25. Goal of archetype
“agile teams”
Optimizing for quick wins &
conflict avoidance

26. projects “agile teams”

27. Paradigm shift:
projects “agile teams”

28. Paradigm shift:
“Team is a building block
of the organization”

29. ??

30. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
??

31. https://youtu.be/zQNzyM7cDb8 watch first 20 seconds for now

32. Goal of archetype
real teams
Optimizing the flow of feature
delivery

33. projects “agile teams” real teams
Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

34. Paradigm shift:
projects “agile” teams real teams
Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

35. Paradigm shift:
“End-to-end teams”
100% Definition of Done + learning

36. Depth of cross-
functionality
(team-level autonomy)
Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

37. Continuous improvement
journey towards perfection.

38. Maps are helpful in journeys

39. We map
organizational
archetypes

40. Culture follows Structure
(in established organizations)
© Larman's Laws of Organizational Behavior

41. Depth of cross-
functionality
(team-level autonomy)
Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

42. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

43. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

44. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

45. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

46. Are we done?

47. Is the organization now fully adaptive?
So is the agile transformation done?

48. https://youtu.be/zQNzyM7cDb8 watch the rest of the video

49. So what are the root causes?

50. https://youtu.be/UU6kTZYYmVM

51. Goal of archetype
value area
Optimizing for control on
business goals & customer
experience

52. Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)
Breadth of
shared
customer
focus
(product-centric alignment)

53. -- backlog per person
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)

54. -- backlog per team
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)

55. -- backlog per area
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)

56. -- backlog per product
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)

57. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)

58. © Henrik Kniberg

59. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)
“agile teams ”
real teams
projects

60. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)
“agile teams” real teams
value area
projects

61. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)
??
“agile teams” real teams
projects
value area

62. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)
“agile teams” real teams
projects
value area
value area
with complications
value area
with complications

63. https://youtu.be/eah35BQ-NYQ

64. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)
real teams
projects
value area
If you have a backlog per team (after an ‘agile
transformation’) then you’re de facto in A2.
“agile” teams

65. We are sorry.

66. Using modern terminology and
paying “expensive consulting firms”
sometimes isn’t enough.

67. Own not rent

68. Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product
alignment)
“agile” teams real teams
projects
value area
??
value area
with complications

69. Consider how adaptive this org is

70. Consider how also simple this org is

71. Goal of archetype
holistic
“Optimizing for value delivery
on the whole product”

72. Journey towards holistic product dev

74. … is a journey of de-scaling

75. … is a journey of teaming

76. orgtopologies.com
Your
org?

77. More mapping
examples

80. SAFe?

81. SAFe

82. Team
Topologies?

83. Team
Topologies

84. Spotify?

85. Spotify

86. Take-aways…

87. Implementing an
“agile framework” can’t be
a transformational goal.

88. In order to gain adaptivity,
an organization needs to keep
improving along two axes

89. Depth of cross-
functionality
(team-level autonomy)
Depth of cross-functionality (team-level autonomy)

90. Breadth of
shared
customer
focus
(product-centric
alignment)
Breadth
of
shared
customer
focus
(product-centric
alignment)

91. Progressing on the map is
hard as it requires realizing
paradigm shifts.

92. And a paradigm shift requires
structural changes.
Because:
culture follows structure.

93. You don’t have to follow each
box on the journey to
perfection.
You can jump levels with “flips”

94. LeSS

95. Org design (as a domain)
can be learned.
And it also can be experienced.

100. Thank you!
Download the latest version of the map and
these slides at
orgtopologies.com
© 2021-2022 Roland Flemm, Alexey Krivitsky